Disciplinary variations in faculty expressions of publicly engaged scholarship during promotion and tenure
Diane Doberneck, Researcher, National Collaborative for the Study of University Engagement, Michigan State University [connordm@msu.edu]
John Schweitzer, Professor, Michigan State University [schweit1@msu.edu]
Keywords: Faculty expressions, engaged scholarship, promotion and tenure, Biglan classification of academic disciplines
Conference Track: Faculty
Format: Research/Scholarly paper
Summary
Faculty expressions of scholarly outreach and engagement vary tremendously. Using Biglan’s classification of academic disciplines, this study revealed statistically significant disciplinary variations by type of engaged scholarship, intensity of activity, and degree of engagement.
More than twenty years after Boyer’s (1990) Scholarship Reconsidered and fifteen years after Diamond and Adam’s (1995) The Disciplines Speak both raised awareness about different ways of defining, conducting, and rewarding disciplinary differences, disciplinary differences related to scholarly outreach and engagement remain largely unexplored empirically.
This study was an interpretive content analysis of faculty members’ promotion and tenure forms from one research-intensive, Carnegie-engaged, land-grant institution in the Midwest (Krippendorf, 2003). Analysis focused on identifying patterns in the data related to disciplines by making use of Biglan’s (1973a) classification of academic disciplines as the theoretical framework. In this study, the Biglan classifications were used to examine different dimensions of faculty members’ engaged scholarship, including types of engaged scholarship, intensity of activity, and degree of engagement (Doberneck, Glass, & Schweitzer, 2010; Doberneck, Glass, & Schweitzer, 2012; Glass, Doberneck, & Schweitzer, 2011).
By using the pure-applied dimension during analysis, faculty members in applied disciplines were statistically more likely to report scholarly outreach and engaged activities than their pure discipline colleagues. By using the life–non-life dimension during analysis, faculty members in the life disciplines were statistically more likely to report scholarly outreach and engaged activities than their non-life discipline colleagues. By using the soft-hard dimension during analysis, faculty members in the hard disciplines were statistically more likely to report scholarly outreach and engaged activities than their soft discipline colleagues. When interactions between the dimensions were explored, the data revealed that applied-hard disciplines conduct more scholarly outreach and engagement activities than their applied-soft colleagues and that pure-soft disciplines conduct more scholarly outreach and engagement activities than their pure-hard colleagues.
References
Adams, H. (1976). The academic tribes. New York, NY: Liveright.
Alise, M. A. (2008). Disciplinary differences in preferred research methods: A comparison of groups in the Biglan classification scheme. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA.
Beecher, T. (1989). Academic tribes and territories: Intellectual enquiry and the culture of the disciplines. Milton Keynes, UK: Society for Research into Higher Education and Open University Press.
Beecher, T., & Trowler, P. (2001). Academic tribes and territories: Intellectual enquiry and the culture of the disciplines (2nd ed.). Buckingham, PA: Society for Research into Higher Education and Open University Press.
Biglan, A. (1973a). The characteristics of subject matter in different academic areas. Journal of Applied Psychology, 57(3), 195–203.
Biglan, A. (1973b). Relationships between subject matter characteristics and the structure and output of university departments. Journal of Applied Psychology, 57(3), 204–213.
Boyatzis, R. E. (1998). Transforming qualitative data: Thematic analysis and code development. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
Boyer, E. (1990). Scholarship reconsidered. Princeton, NJ: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
Braxton, J. M., & Hargens, L. L. (1996). Variations among academic disciplines: Analytic frameworks and research. In J. C. Smart (Ed.), Higher education: Handbook of theory and research (Vol. 11, pp. 1–46). New York, NY: Agathon Press.
Creswell, J., & Bean, J. (1981). Research output, socialization, and the Biglan model. Research in Higher Education, 15(1), 69–91.
Diamond, R. M., & Adam, B. E. (1995). The disciplines speak: Rewarding the scholarly, professional, and creative work of faculty. Washington, DC: American Association for Higher Education.
Diamond, R. M. & Adam, B. E. (2000). The disciplines speak II: More statements on rewarding the scholarly, professional, and creative work for faculty. Washington, DC: American Association for Higher Education.
Diener, M. L., & Liese, H. (Eds.). (2009). Finding meaning in civically engaged scholarship: Personal journeys, professional experiences. Charlotte, NC: Information Age.
Doberneck, D. M., Glass, C. R., & Schweitzer, J. H. (2010). From rhetoric to reality: A typology of publicly engaged scholarship. Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement, 14(4), 5–35.
Doberneck, D. M., Glass, C. R., & Schweitzer, J. H. (2012). Beyond activity, place, and partners: How publicly engaged scholarship varies by intensity of activity and degree of engagement. Journal of Community Engaged Scholarship, 4(2), 18-28.
Ellison, J., & Eatman, T. K. (2008). Scholarship in public: Knowledge creation and tenure policy in the engaged university. Syracuse, NY: Imagining America.
Fear, F. A., Rosaen, C., Bawden, R., & Foster-Fishman, P. (2006). Coming to critical engagement: An autoethnograhic exploration. Lanhman, MD: University Press of America.
Glass, C. R., Doberneck, D. M., & Schweitzer, J. H. (2011). Unpacking faculty engagement: The types of activities faculty members report as publicly engaged scholarship during promotion and tenure. Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement, 15(1), 7–30.
Kagan, J. (2009). The three cultures: Natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities in the 21st century. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Krippendorf, K. (2003). Content analysis: An introduction to its methodology. Beverly Hills, CA: SAGE.
Lamont, M. (2009). How professors think: Inside the curious world of academic judgment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
MacQueen, K. M., McLellan, E., Kay, K., & Milstein, B. (1998). Codebook development for team-based qualitative analysis. Cultural Anthropology Methods, 10(2), 31–36.
Mitchell, K. (Ed.). (2008). Practising public scholarship: Experiences and possibilities beyond the academy. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
Moore, T. L., & Ward, K. (2008). Documenting engagement: Faculty perspectives on self-representation for promotion and tenure. Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement, 12(4), 5–27.
Morreale, S. P., & Applegate, J. L. (2006). Engaged disciplines: How national disciplinary societies support the scholarship of engagement. In K. Kecskes (Ed.), Engaging departments: Moving faculty culture from private to public, individual to collective focus for the common good (pp. 264–277). Bolton, MA: Anker.
Muffalo, J., & Langston, I. (1981). Biglan’s dimensions: Are the perceptions empirically based? Research in Higher Education, 15(2), 141–159.
Neumann, A. (2009). Professing to learn: Creating tenured lives and careers in the American research universities. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Neumann, A., & Terosky, A. L. (2007). To give and to receive: Recently tenured professors’ experiences of service in major research universities. The Journal of Higher Education, 29(3), 323–338.
Peters, S. J., Alter, T. R., & Schwartzbach, N. (2008). Unsettling a settled discourse: Faculty views of meaning and significance of the land grant mission. Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement, 12(2), 33–66.
Peters, S. J., Jordan, N. R., Adamek, M., & Alter, T. R. (Eds.). (2005) Engaging campus and community: The practice of public scholarship in the state and land-grant university system. Dayton, OH: Kettering Foundation Press.
Schomberg, S. F., & Farmer, J. A., Jr. (1994). The evolving concept of public service and implications for rewarding faculty. Continuing Higher Education Review, 58(3), 122–140.
Schommer-Aikins, M., Duell, O. K., & Barker, S. (2003). Epistemological beliefs across domains using Biglan’s classification of academic disciplines. Research in Higher Education, 44(3), 347–366.
Smart, J., & Elton, C. (1982). Validation of Biglan’s model. Research in Higher Education, 17(3), 213–229.
Snow, C. P. (1959). Two cultures and the scientific revolution. London, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Stoecker, J. L. (1993). The Biglan classification revisited. Research in Higher Education, 34(4), 451–464.
Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1990). Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory and procedures and techniques. Newbury Park, CA: SAGE.
Thornton, C. H., & Jaeger, A. J. (2008). The role of culture in institutional and individual approaches to civic responsibility at research universities. Journal of Higher Education, 79(2), 160–181.
Vogelgesang, L. J., Denson, N., & Jayakumar, U. (2010). What determines faculty-engaged scholarship? Review of Higher Education, 33(4), 437–472.
To access materials from this session please click on the file link(s) below:
Disciplinary variations in faculty expressions of publicly engaged scholarship during promotion and tenure
Diane Doberneck, Researcher, National Collaborative for the Study of University Engagement, Michigan State University [connordm@msu.edu]
John Schweitzer, Professor, Michigan State University [schweit1@msu.edu]
Keywords: Faculty expressions, engaged scholarship, promotion and tenure, Biglan classification of academic disciplines
Conference Track: Faculty
Format: Research/Scholarly paper
Summary
Faculty expressions of scholarly outreach and engagement vary tremendously. Using Biglan’s classification of academic disciplines, this study revealed statistically significant disciplinary variations by type of engaged scholarship, intensity of activity, and degree of engagement.
More than twenty years after Boyer’s (1990) Scholarship Reconsidered and fifteen years after Diamond and Adam’s (1995) The Disciplines Speak both raised awareness about different ways of defining, conducting, and rewarding disciplinary differences, disciplinary differences related to scholarly outreach and engagement remain largely unexplored empirically.
This study was an interpretive content analysis of faculty members’ promotion and tenure forms from one research-intensive, Carnegie-engaged, land-grant institution in the Midwest (Krippendorf, 2003). Analysis focused on identifying patterns in the data related to disciplines by making use of Biglan’s (1973a) classification of academic disciplines as the theoretical framework. In this study, the Biglan classifications were used to examine different dimensions of faculty members’ engaged scholarship, including types of engaged scholarship, intensity of activity, and degree of engagement (Doberneck, Glass, & Schweitzer, 2010; Doberneck, Glass, & Schweitzer, 2012; Glass, Doberneck, & Schweitzer, 2011).
By using the pure-applied dimension during analysis, faculty members in applied disciplines were statistically more likely to report scholarly outreach and engaged activities than their pure discipline colleagues. By using the life–non-life dimension during analysis, faculty members in the life disciplines were statistically more likely to report scholarly outreach and engaged activities than their non-life discipline colleagues. By using the soft-hard dimension during analysis, faculty members in the hard disciplines were statistically more likely to report scholarly outreach and engaged activities than their soft discipline colleagues. When interactions between the dimensions were explored, the data revealed that applied-hard disciplines conduct more scholarly outreach and engagement activities than their applied-soft colleagues and that pure-soft disciplines conduct more scholarly outreach and engagement activities than their pure-hard colleagues.
References
Adams, H. (1976). The academic tribes. New York, NY: Liveright.
Alise, M. A. (2008). Disciplinary differences in preferred research methods: A comparison of groups in the Biglan classification scheme. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA.
Beecher, T. (1989). Academic tribes and territories: Intellectual enquiry and the culture of the disciplines. Milton Keynes, UK: Society for Research into Higher Education and Open University Press.
Beecher, T., & Trowler, P. (2001). Academic tribes and territories: Intellectual enquiry and the culture of the disciplines (2nd ed.). Buckingham, PA: Society for Research into Higher Education and Open University Press.
Biglan, A. (1973a). The characteristics of subject matter in different academic areas. Journal of Applied Psychology, 57(3), 195–203.
Biglan, A. (1973b). Relationships between subject matter characteristics and the structure and output of university departments. Journal of Applied Psychology, 57(3), 204–213.
Boyatzis, R. E. (1998). Transforming qualitative data: Thematic analysis and code development. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
Boyer, E. (1990). Scholarship reconsidered. Princeton, NJ: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
Braxton, J. M., & Hargens, L. L. (1996). Variations among academic disciplines: Analytic frameworks and research. In J. C. Smart (Ed.), Higher education: Handbook of theory and research (Vol. 11, pp. 1–46). New York, NY: Agathon Press.
Creswell, J., & Bean, J. (1981). Research output, socialization, and the Biglan model. Research in Higher Education, 15(1), 69–91.
Diamond, R. M., & Adam, B. E. (1995). The disciplines speak: Rewarding the scholarly, professional, and creative work of faculty. Washington, DC: American Association for Higher Education.
Diamond, R. M. & Adam, B. E. (2000). The disciplines speak II: More statements on rewarding the scholarly, professional, and creative work for faculty. Washington, DC: American Association for Higher Education.
Diener, M. L., & Liese, H. (Eds.). (2009). Finding meaning in civically engaged scholarship: Personal journeys, professional experiences. Charlotte, NC: Information Age.
Doberneck, D. M., Glass, C. R., & Schweitzer, J. H. (2010). From rhetoric to reality: A typology of publicly engaged scholarship. Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement, 14(4), 5–35.
Doberneck, D. M., Glass, C. R., & Schweitzer, J. H. (2012). Beyond activity, place, and partners: How publicly engaged scholarship varies by intensity of activity and degree of engagement. Journal of Community Engaged Scholarship, 4(2), 18-28.
Ellison, J., & Eatman, T. K. (2008). Scholarship in public: Knowledge creation and tenure policy in the engaged university. Syracuse, NY: Imagining America.
Fear, F. A., Rosaen, C., Bawden, R., & Foster-Fishman, P. (2006). Coming to critical engagement: An autoethnograhic exploration. Lanhman, MD: University Press of America.
Glass, C. R., Doberneck, D. M., & Schweitzer, J. H. (2011). Unpacking faculty engagement: The types of activities faculty members report as publicly engaged scholarship during promotion and tenure. Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement, 15(1), 7–30.
Kagan, J. (2009). The three cultures: Natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities in the 21st century. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Krippendorf, K. (2003). Content analysis: An introduction to its methodology. Beverly Hills, CA: SAGE.
Lamont, M. (2009). How professors think: Inside the curious world of academic judgment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
MacQueen, K. M., McLellan, E., Kay, K., & Milstein, B. (1998). Codebook development for team-based qualitative analysis. Cultural Anthropology Methods, 10(2), 31–36.
Mayring, P. (2000). Qualitative content analysis. Forum on Qualitative Social Research, 1(2). Retrieved from http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/1089/2385
Mitchell, K. (Ed.). (2008). Practising public scholarship: Experiences and possibilities beyond the academy. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
Moore, T. L., & Ward, K. (2008). Documenting engagement: Faculty perspectives on self-representation for promotion and tenure. Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement, 12(4), 5–27.
Morreale, S. P., & Applegate, J. L. (2006). Engaged disciplines: How national disciplinary societies support the scholarship of engagement. In K. Kecskes (Ed.), Engaging departments: Moving faculty culture from private to public, individual to collective focus for the common good (pp. 264–277). Bolton, MA: Anker.
Muffalo, J., & Langston, I. (1981). Biglan’s dimensions: Are the perceptions empirically based? Research in Higher Education, 15(2), 141–159.
Neumann, A. (2009). Professing to learn: Creating tenured lives and careers in the American research universities. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Neumann, A., & Terosky, A. L. (2007). To give and to receive: Recently tenured professors’ experiences of service in major research universities. The Journal of Higher Education, 29(3), 323–338.
Peters, S. J., Alter, T. R., & Schwartzbach, N. (2008). Unsettling a settled discourse: Faculty views of meaning and significance of the land grant mission. Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement, 12(2), 33–66.
Peters, S. J., Jordan, N. R., Adamek, M., & Alter, T. R. (Eds.). (2005) Engaging campus and community: The practice of public scholarship in the state and land-grant university system. Dayton, OH: Kettering Foundation Press.
Schomberg, S. F., & Farmer, J. A., Jr. (1994). The evolving concept of public service and implications for rewarding faculty. Continuing Higher Education Review, 58(3), 122–140.
Schommer-Aikins, M., Duell, O. K., & Barker, S. (2003). Epistemological beliefs across domains using Biglan’s classification of academic disciplines. Research in Higher Education, 44(3), 347–366.
Smart, J., & Elton, C. (1982). Validation of Biglan’s model. Research in Higher Education, 17(3), 213–229.
Snow, C. P. (1959). Two cultures and the scientific revolution. London, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Stoecker, J. L. (1993). The Biglan classification revisited. Research in Higher Education, 34(4), 451–464.
Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1990). Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory and procedures and techniques. Newbury Park, CA: SAGE.
Thornton, C. H., & Jaeger, A. J. (2008). The role of culture in institutional and individual approaches to civic responsibility at research universities. Journal of Higher Education, 79(2), 160–181.
Vogelgesang, L. J., Denson, N., & Jayakumar, U. (2010). What determines faculty-engaged scholarship? Review of Higher Education, 33(4), 437–472.
To access materials from this session please click on the file link(s) below: